Erik ten Hag has reacted angrily to ‘speculation’ over why he dropped Marcus Rashford against Crystal Palace, after Jamie Redknapp this week suspected ‘something had happened’.
Rashford has scored three times in his last two games but had to settle for a half-hour substitute appearance as Manchester United drew 0-0 at Selhurst Park.
This week Ten Hag warned the £300,000-a-week forward that he needs to “get his life in order” if he is to regain his best form of 2022-23, when he scored 30 goals.
Ten Hag said: ‘I’ve heard speculations from experts, it’s crazy, as a person you’re not okay if you make such speculations when you don’t know. It was just rotation.
Erik ten Hag has criticised ‘speculation’ over why he dropped Marcus Rashford against Crystal Palace
Redknapp claimed ‘something happened’ between Ten Hag and Rashford
Ten Hag said Rashford needs to ‘get his life in order’ to regain his best form at United
“I am very happy with Marcus, in everything he does.”
Redknapp had hit a bull’s eye with Ten Hag, saying: ‘It feels like maybe something happened this week. I don’t know, the manager’s frustration.’
Rashford scored his first Premier League goal of the season in the 3-0 win over Southampton last weekend, before adding a pair of goals in the 7-0 win over Barnsley in the Carabao Cup in midweek.
The 26-year-old’s performances plummeted last season after signing a new £300,000-a-week contract, was criticised by Ten Hag for missing training after a 12-hour tequila binge in Belfast and for going to a nightclub after United’s Manchester derby defeat in October.
Redknapp responded strongly to Ten Hag’s comments after the final, as United had taken a point on the pitch they had lost 4-0 last season.
He said: ‘It was a fascinating game today with Marcus Rashford, we thought he made a good impression scoring a couple of goals, a couple during the week and one at the weekend.
‘I thought the momentum was building and the confidence was building and he’s been left out today. There’s a bit of a cloud hanging over him. I don’t think it’s ideal for the club because the manager – every press conference he has is about Marcus Rashford.
“That’s something we need to nip in the bud so he can get back into shape and get the confidence he started to show.”
Rashford came on for 30 minutes against Palace but couldn’t find the net after a good run of form
“I can only imagine that when he woke up to those headlines, it probably wasn’t fun for him to wonder why the manager brought that up. I read it initially as if we had figured it out and almost like, this is why he didn’t do so well this year, because he wasn’t living the way a professional athlete should live.
‘It’s clearly been interpreted differently, because he’s being left out of the picture today. I don’t know what happened this week, it could come out, it could not.
He can say that [rotation]. He played 63 minutes in the middle of the week and scored twice. You don’t take a player who has scored twice; do you think they would do that with Salah at Liverpool if he scored three times in two games? That’s not going to happen.
“Something happened that we don’t know about. If there’s something that’s a little bit inappropriate and he’s not living his life right, that’s something that only he can control.
“You have to make sure you’re on it all the time. I loved a night out, we all did. You have to make sure you live your life well more than ever. In my day, almost everyone did that. But not anymore, you have to live your life well every day, you have to dedicate your life to football. He has to go to the player from two years ago.
“It doesn’t make sense that you can be at such a high level and still fall back to where he was last year. It was hard to watch. In certain games he was just running around and struggling.”
